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Acceleration of the refolding of Arc repressor by nucleic acids and other polyanions

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Abstract

The refolding rate of the Arc repressor dimer can be accelerated 30-fold or more by negatively charged polymers including single-stranded and double-stranded DNA, RNA, and polyvinylsulfate but not by neutral or positively charged polymers. The salt-dependence of the polyanion-mediated process and mutant studies indicate that electrostatic interactions are important in the rate acceleration. Urea-dependence studies suggest that Arc is relatively unstructured in the transition state for polyanion-stimulated refolding. At low ionic strength, the observed kinetics of refolding are consistent with a model in which denatured Arc monomers bind rapidly and nonspecifically to the polyanion and complete folding in the bound state.

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Figure 1: DNA accelerates the refolding of Arc.
Figure 2: Rate dependence on salt, PVS, and DNA concentration.
Figure 3: Urea and viscosity dependence.
Figure 4: Possible pathways for Arc refolding in the presence of polyanions (P).

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Acknowledgements

D.R. and T.J. contributed equally to this work. Supported by NIH grants and a postdoctoral grant from the Damon Runyon/Walter Winchell Cancer Fund (D.R.). We thank B. Brown, M. Milla, and C. Robinson for mutant proteins, and F. Solomon for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Robert T. Sauer.

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Rentzeperis, D., Jonsson, T. & Sauer, R. Acceleration of the refolding of Arc repressor by nucleic acids and other polyanions. Nat Struct Mol Biol 6, 569–573 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/9353

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